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This happens in movies, but I most remember it from the rebooted Battlestar Galatica.

The scenario is, the enemy has gotten some place they shouldn't and one ragtag bunch of heroes is told they are the only thing standing between the enemy and their objective. The background music swells, along with mad gun fire and explosions. If the heroes are the only ones left and they happen to be on the radio at that moment, who the heck is doing all that shooting?

Another great one is when knives work better than guns. A terrible example is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The bad guys have armor plates on their chests that stop machine gun rounds and elephant guns. The hero throws a knife through that plate. How does that work? I am pretty sure that elephant guns are overbuilt to the point of near impracticability. Might as well call them mass drivers.

Oh, I might as well through this in, but every single David Lynch movie leaves me more confused than when I walked in and sat down.

I always assumed the Indiana Jones movies were told from the POV of an unreliable narrator. The action and escape scenes have always been way over the top and at times campy for all the movies. That's why I didn't have a huge problem with the refrigerator scene in Crystal Skull. The mining cart roller-coaster from Temple of Doom is less believable than the fridge scene, in my opinion. And then again, he "parachuted" out of an airplane on an inflatable raft! And someone years ago calculated how much force they hit the cliff wall with on the rope bridge - I don't remember how much, but it was enough to shatter bones. I'm sure there are more we can come up with, but this isn't an Indiana Jones thread, so let's move on.

CJSF

"A scientific theory
Isn't just a hunch or guess
It's more like a question
That's been put through a lot of tests
And when a theory emerges
Consistent with the facts
The proof is with science
The truth is with science"-They Might Be Giants, "Science Is Real"lonelybirder.org

I'm sure there are more we can come up with, but this isn't an Indiana Jones thread, so let's move on.

One of my favorites (for professional reasons) is the scene where there is a mob of students for his office hours. He announces he will see them in order, goes inside, locks his door, and climbs out the window. Makes me regret having a third-floor office, window or not[1]. The unrealistic part by today's standards is that students come in droves to office hours. (Insert MP3 of crockets chirping).

[1] Our regular reminders of what to do during a campus active-shooter incident have had me evaluate rope ladders. The three steps were even on a big electronic billboard a mile from campus. Flee - hide - act, in that order or preference, for those who might be wondering.

Speaking of Indiana Jones, the scene where he climbs onto the submerging submarine comes close to ruining the whole film for me.

"There is a deleted scene in which you see Indy holding on to the periscope, which is sticking out of the water. Early submarines generally traveled the oceans on the surface of the water under diesel power, which requires access to the air for inlets to the engines. They could only travel short distances under water, as this required electric propulsion and the battery power of the submarine did not last very long. German U-boats would only submerge when they'd attack surface ships. However, there would generally be four or five crewman on the conning tower as lookouts. U-boats generally would submerge to a depth of roughly 12 meters, deep enough to observe the surface through the periscope. In the novelization, Indy lashed himself to the periscope with his bullwhip and rode/dozed through 20 frigid hours in oceanic water. "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082971/faq#.2.1.4

This has been hashed out by WWI/Raiders fans. German U-boats routinely plied the surface of the waters unless there was reason to fully submerge.

All submarines of the WWII era cruised on the surface, even after they had [the Dutch-invented] snorkel installed: they were surface ships that could submerge for a short time, not ships able to cruise for weeks submerged.

The Indiana Jones movies were modern incarnations of Pre-WWII adventure stories, so plausibility was strictly rationed.

Last edited by swampyankee; 2017-Apr-21 at 02:27 AM.

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This problem is one that is in many movies that involve lava. You know where the person is standing on a car or a rock surrounded by flowing lava and they are unaffected by the heat of molten rock unless they step in it. Volcano and Dante's Peak were great examples of this unrealistic resistance to radiant heat. The truck driving through lava with only the tires burning in Dante's Peak was funny. Volcano had too many of these scenes and the last one where they had a few minutes to set explosives to bring down a 30 story building and excavate a canal for the lava to divert in was truly mind-boggling.

Flowing lava's approachable - people have occasionally chipped bits off the surface of an active flow using a geological hammer. It depends on the wind direction and the nature of the lava flow. But film makers often choose the most photogenic appearance for their lava, which resembles an a'a flow, shot through with red veins - and you can't easily get near that kind. There's a good discussion here, written by people whose jobs involve approaching flowing lava.

Flowing lava's approachable - people have occasionally chipped bits off the surface of an active flow using a geological hammer. It depends on the wind direction and the nature of the lava flow. But film makers often choose the most photogenic appearance for their lava, which resembles an a'a flow, shot through with red veins - and you can't easily get near that kind. There's a good discussion here, written by people whose jobs involve approaching flowing lava.

Grant Hutchison

I get that Hawaiian lava is the most visually dramatic, but the first time such a flow showed up in Dante's Peak when they'd previously kept to the rules (if a bit exaggerated and on a quick timescale) of a Plinian, not Hawaiian, eruption, I cried out "Aw man, you were doing so well!"

I get that Hawaiian lava is the most visually dramatic, but the first time such a flow showed up in Dante's Peak when they'd previously kept to the rules (if a bit exaggerated and on a quick timescale) of a Plinian, not Hawaiian, eruption, I cried out "Aw man, you were doing so well!"

Yeah, they really shook out almost the entire bag of volcanic outflow types and combined them in a single volcano.

I never understood why they missed out a lahar, which would have been right at home. They could have done a lot with a lahar.

Grant Hutchison

The river choked with mud and trees could have been the result of a lahar, at least. The scene emphasized it as a threat because it was flooded and full of debris more than because it was boiling, though. Given the other MSH parallels, I kind of expected the head scientist who got swept away to survive with bad burns like Venus Dergan and Roald Reitan and show up in a hospital at the end, so I was surprised when his apparent death turned out to be his actual death. Weird that in the rare case where they could point to a real-life incident to justify a miraculous "Hollywood" survival, Hollywood didn't!

Originally Posted by Noisy Rhysling

Yeah, that was understood when the movie came out. The Rockies were the backdrop for the filming, mountain town and the like. I think they even had a "Harry Truman" figure in the movie?

Yes, the heroine's mother parallels Truman in not wanting to evacuate, although they do manage to get her to go with them once the lava flow comes.

I never understood why they missed out a lahar, which would have been right at home. They could have done a lot with a lahar.

Someone gets washed away in one, I believe.

Originally Posted by Noisy Rhysling

Yeah, that was understood when the movie came out. The Rockies were the backdrop for the filming, mountain town and the like. I think they even had a "Harry Truman" figure in the movie?

Yes, the kids' grandmother. I actually read an oral history of the eruption, the real one, that suggests that Harry Truman wanted to leave by the time the mountain was ready to go, but he'd built up this persona that basically kept him from doing so. It's really sad, if it's true.

_____________________________________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

Are you recalling the sequence in which Paul, the team leader, got swept away when the bridge was washed out with his vehicle on it? I can't think of anything else.
The river was fall of water and trees, and the flood was depicted as resulting primarily from a dam failure upstream.
You can see the dam breaking on YouTube here, and the bridge going here. With the scenes of fast snowmelt at the start of the dam sequence, it looks like a lahar brewing, but then the dam failure produces a conventional flood instead.

Are you recalling the sequence in which Paul, the team leader, got swept away when the bridge was washed out with his vehicle on it? I can't think of anything else.
The river was fall of water and trees, and the flood was depicted as resulting primarily from a dam failure upstream.
You can see the dam breaking on YouTube here, and the bridge going here. With the scenes of fast snowmelt at the start of the dam sequence, it looks like a lahar brewing, but then the dam failure produces a conventional flood instead.

Was there another sequence with a proper lahar?

Grant Hutchison

They might have seen the footage of the lahars at MSH and thought "No way we can do that!"